Tant: Recent war protest in D.C. was 'where we need to be'

Posted: Saturday, March 24, 2007

Ed

Tant

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WASHINGTON - Chanting "Not another nickel, not another dime. No more money for Bush's crime," thousands of anti-war Americans marched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Pentagon on March 17. The demonstration coincided with the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and came nearly 40 years after the 1967 march on the Pentagon that was a turning point in protests against the Vietnam War.

Despite bone-chilling cold and biting winds, concerned citizens converged upon Washington and the Pentagon across the Potomac in Virginia. Even large and angry groups of pro-war protesters did nothing to diminish the determination of the anti-war legions. Like echoes of the '60s resounding into the present, the peaceful and good-humored war protesters chanted, "Hell no, we won't go. We won't kill for Texaco," and "Hey, Bush! What do you say? How many kids did you kill today?"

Carrying signs urging an end to the Iraq war and impeachment of the Bush/Cheney administration, the marchers surged across the Potomac to the Pentagon in a long and winding peace procession led by war veterans and Gold Star family members who had lost sons or daughters in Bush's Iraq misadventure.

"Peace Mom" Cindy Sheehan told a cheering audience, "Forty years ago there was a march on the Pentagon and here we are 40 years later marching on the Pentagon against another illegal and immoral war. When is it going to stop? This country gets into these wars for the corporations. It's to make people like Halliburton and Exxon and Blackwater and Raytheon rich and to line the pockets of George Bush and Dick Cheney and all the rest of the war criminals. We have to march on the Congress to tell them that we are the deciders and that we have decided that we want Bush and Cheney impeached, we want them indicted and we want them imprisoned."

Talking with me after her speech, Sheehan urged parents to discourage their children from joining the military and said that whether parents of fallen military personnel are for or against the Iraq war, "My heart is with you because I know how painful it is."

Sheehan lost her son in Iraq in 2004.

"I wish I had tried harder to stop my son, Casey, from joining the military," she told me.

In a fiery speech that reprised the 1967 Pentagon march theme of "from protest to resistance," Liam Madden, who served as a Marine Corps sergeant in Iraq, drew thunderous applause when he said, "I do not want to wake up in 2015 to a war in Iraq because we were too timid in 2007. Congress has done nothing meaningful to stop this war and our calls for logic, our pleas for sanity and our demands for humanity have fallen on deaf ears. Therefore it is on us to stop this four-year war crime. Let's make a transition from symbolic protest to tangible resistance. Let's put our bodies in the streets."

Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark used his Pentagon pulpit to call for the impeachment of the Bush/Cheney crew to "restore order, the rule of law, and the Constitution of, by and for the people." Firebrand lawyer Mara Verheyden-Hilliard mentioned the winter storms in the Northeast that stranded untold numbers of travelers who would have attended the march. "Every one of you is standing here for thousands and thousands of people around the country," she said. "My father, a World War II veteran, drove 14 hours from Boston to get here."

Marchers from the Athens area seemed to enjoy the event regardless of the bitter cold.

"This is just where we need to be," Twyla Tucker said.

"We have to be here," Don Tucker agreed. "This war's got to stop."

Both young people said they had hoped for a larger march, but added that the size of the event was good, considering the inclement weather.

Athens peace marcher Todd Lister said, "I'm here because this may be one of our last chances to save our country from corporate warmongers all about profiteering in Iraq.

The course we're on is a dead end. The so-called patriots who turned out today to support Bush and the war are the most hateful, misguided people ever to claim American citizenship. It was unbelievable what they said and did in the face of people just trying to bring peace."

Another Athenian, John Gingerich, summed up the motive of the march.

"I'm here to do what I can to make the world a better place," he said.

 Tant has been an Athens columnist since 1974. His work also has appeared in The New York Times, The Progressive, Astronomy magazine and other publications. For more, see his Web site, www.edtant.com.